


All That Glitters

by pdorkaa



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Missing Persons, Mission Fic, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:49:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4205136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pdorkaa/pseuds/pdorkaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel returns from a planet full of interesting archaeological finds - alas, soon enough the planet is swarming with Earth's finest, only for them to find that nothing is as it seems at first. And what happens when the renowned archaeologist, Dr. Daniel Jackson goes missing? Naturally, someone has to rescue him before he dies again.</p><p>This was left untouched on my dashboard since basically Adam and Eve, and I've just recently started giving it more thought. Sadly, I still may abandon it again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is the drabble previously known as "uh?" - and so, this is resurrected from its own coffin. it takes place during early eighth season (somewhere around Zero Hour), and although i do have some sort of a plan for it, i have no idea how many chapters it'll take (since i usually write really short ones, probably a lot).  
> plus, i'm basically foreshadowing S9 and S10's "Ancients on Earth" themes.

Jack sighed. This day wasn't gonna be any easier than the last one or the day before.

One of the downsides of being the head of SGC - save for the paperwork, of course - was rotting behind General Hammond's desk. His desk, dammit, not Hammond's. Not that it wasn't a nice desk or something, but it meant that Jack won't ever be out on the field again.

He rubbed his temples and sent Walter for coffee, instead of thinking about his team offworld. Carter's team, God dammit, not his. Jack really needed time to accommodate.

How was he going to live without all the annoying things Daniel had to say?! During the past seven years, he really got used to Carter's scientific explanations from which he usually understood the "and"s and "or"s; to Daniel's excitement over completely boring and presumably dangerous Ancient artifacts. And, of course, to Teal'c silent raise of an eyebrow.

Lately Teal'c had been making jokes, though. That was definitely the worst part about becoming Brigadier General J. O'Neill (with to L-s): missing out on Teal'c's jokes.

Plus it meant less team BBQs, less movie nights with Teal'c, less teasing Carter about her fiancé, and less beers and sports games with Daniel... The train of thought deterred, and suddenly Daniel's face - in extreme detail - appeared behind Jack's closed eyelids. He was talking about something, Goa'uld this and Ancient Egyptian that, even asking if Jack was truly listening. Even in Jack's own thoughts, he was a pain in the ass, apparently.

It was starting to prove to be a problem, his increasing number of thoughts of Daniel. Daniel translating. Daniel angrily taking the priceless artifact from his hands. Daniel eating blue jello. Daniel in the showe--

"General?"

He looked up to see Walter hovering on the treshold.

"Is that my coffee?"

Walter nodded and set the mug down in front of him. "SG-1 is back, sir."

Already? He must have been completely engrossed in thought, otherwise he would've noticed the blaring of the offworld activation alarm. Or maybe he was going crazy.

Sighing, he picked up his mug, and sauntered down to the gateroom, where his former team was just handing their weapons to the airmen.

"At ease" he said as the soldiers straightened themselves at his entrance. "How'd it go?" He asked Carter.

"Fine, sir." She smiled.

"The natives were really friendly, and the archaeological founds deserve some attention. Jack" Daniel looked him in the eye, "I think we have to--"

"Daniel" he interrupted the archaeologist, "debriefing at" he glanced at his wristwatch, "1700 hours."

"But, Jack..." 

But General Jack O'Neill only waved a dismissive hand at them, and returned to his office.

 

 

"Tell me again" Jack sighed, "why is this doohickey so important?"

Daniel groaned in frustration. "This could be proof that the Atlantean Ancients were here in the Dark Ages!"

"And...?" He didn't finish the sentence, but his face made up for the rest of it. He noticed that Teal'c raised an amused eyebrow, and that Carter almost started giggling, for cryin' out loud, but his thoughts remained fixed on his archaeologist. SGC's archaeologist. Whatever.

"Jack, we're talking about, say, Arthurian ages! For Ancients to be here..." Daniel threw up his hands.

"How could an alien planet be proof of that?" He argued.

"Sir" Carter took over, "I think what Daniel's trying to say is that we need to inspect this site more closely."

"Indeed, O'Neill" Teal'c added.

"What do yo want, people?" Jack exclaimed. He rubbed a hand across his face.

"I believe DanielJackson wishes to conduct an excavation."

"What?!"

"Jack, this is really important. It could be the most important find since P3X-888!"

Jack made a face at Carter.

"The planet with the Goa'uld fossils and the Unas, sir."

"Ah." He sighed again. He was doing a lot of that lately. "Tell me I'm wrong, but wasn't Atlantis the most important find?"

"Jack, please." Daniel looked at him with piercing blue eyes, and Jack was a sucker for that. He sighed.

"Make a list of the personnel and the things you wanna take. And Daniel" he warned,  "you're taking Reynolds' people. Carter, you'll be in charge. Daniel's your 2IC. Dismissed" he stood up.

"Yes, sir!" Carter stood at attention when Jack left.

"That was... Easy" Daniel said, thoroughly surprised. 

"Indeed" Teal'c glanced towards Jack's office with a raised eyebrow and a puzzled look.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, chapters were getting so short i fused them together - previously this was chapter three and four.

Daniel stood up and streched out his sore back muscles. He looked over the site. The dig was going well, and the finds were truly fascinating. Of course, Jack would have made a face and called it all "loitering" and then proceed to spend his days sitting and complaining and generally being a pain in the ass.

But somehow, Daniel never managed to keep at being angry with him.

He looked over the site again. Three other archaeologists and several SG-team trainees were taking pictures of the artifacts, cataloguing them, some were filming the obelisks, some were carerully setting up another dig a few metres away.

SG-3 just got back from the perimeter check, looking perfectly satisfied with the planet. Daniel agreed with them; the planet was inhhabited, but the natives were few and friendly; the temperature was just short of hot, fhe flora and fauna plenty, the sky a spectacular view at night. And there was the added bonus of the Ancient history, of course.

He turned his attention back to the tablet he was working on. He brushed down the remaining dust, and gently lifted it out from the dirt.

"Daniel" he jerked at the feel of someone touching his shoulder, but sagged in relief when he saw it was Carter. "You forgot to eat. Again" she grinned, and handed him something that vaguely resembled stew.

"Thanks, Sam" he smiled a weak smile.

"So, how's it going?" She asked as she sat down next to him onto a crate.

"Very well" he answered around a mouthful of food. "It's-- everywhere you look, there's something important and valuable" he said. "And, look here, this tablet says that the Ancients were forced to leave Earth again because they'd faced an enemy too great" he took a breath.

"Maybe it's talking about the Wraith" she said, shrugging.

"I don't think so" he answered. "You know, there's no record of the Wraith ever being in this galaxy. And, there's this part" he indicated it with his spoon, "it says, 'on the plane of ascension'. The wraith were the enemy before" he stressed the word "the Ancients ascended."

Sam smiled.

"What?"

"You started talking really fast. That usually means that you're onto something."

He smiled. "But I'm not sure about this 'plane of ascension' part."

He sighed. A memory came to him, from long years ago: him, translating as best he could, and the best he could come up with was 'a piece of our leg'. Of course, that was before it clicked and he'd found the correct translation, but--

"It'd be nice to have someone to consult with."

"That's the downside of being the lead expert in Ancient history and language" Sam smiled gently and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Weir speaks Ancient perfectly" he commented.

"Daniel, she's in another galaxy" she laughed.

"I guess I'm stuck with this job, then."

But this only earned him a smack on the head.

 

 

Daniel woke up annoyed. In his dream, Oma Desala bombarded him with useless proverbs and useless prodding in the direction of that tablet.

"If you knew the candlelight was fire..." he murmured, as he sat up in the tent and put his glasses on. He scooted closer to the tablet he was working on.

"This is all wrong" he scoffed and tossed his pen onto the paper. He glanced at his watch - it showed the Earth time, but it indicated that he was working for hours now. 

He forced himself to think it over again.

The constant jumping between the Pegasus galaxy and the Milky Way was, in itself, confusing. And now this!

Everyone could have been an Ancient! Ambrosius, or King Arthur, or Merlin, or Galahad...

He sighed. Some historians entertained the notion that King Arthur and Ambrosius were the same person. Well, if they were, they could have been an Ancient.

Hell, Morgan le Fay could have been one!

And the true meaning of the tablet eluded him. What could threaten ascended beings?

Well, the obvious answer was 'other ascended beings'. But Anubis was long since dealt with, and the fear of interfering with lesser life forms prevented the ascended from stepping out of line.

He pulled off his glasses and pushed the heels of his palm into his eye sockets.

Looking at the tablet again, he noticed a line he hadn't translated before, because a huge crack ran across it, making half the letters illegible.

Transferred to Daniel's messy scrawl, it read: "THO-E -- WH- -- --JEC- -- -HE -- -ATH-- -F -- ---IGHTE---NT -- M--T -- BE -- -STROY-D -- HA-L-WED -- --E -- --E -- -RI"

A bunch of nothing, then.


	3. Chapter 3

"General?"

Jack jerked straight upright, and spent a few moments blinking at Walter, trying to focus. Walter kept making pointy fingers at his face, and this made it all the harder for Jack to understand the situation.

He then disengaged the pencil that got stuck on his left cheek while he was taking a blissful nap on the top of Hammond's desk. His desk. Whatever.

Walter stopped making pointy fingers. "The SG-1 is coming back, sir..."

"Why do I have déjá vû?" Jack muttered under his breath.

"And so is SG-3 and the archaeological team."

"Thank you, Walter" he said. Walter stood rooted on the spot, with a small fond smile playing on his features.

Jack's eyebrows slowly crept up to his hairline. "Dismissed" he finally said after a strech of long, pregnant pause.

 

He arrived to the control room just when the gate opened -- but there was no Daniel Jackson coming out of that gate. Mainly, the only thing that was coming out of the event horizon was various sorts of primitive projectiles; arrows, stones, twigs and branches for cryin' out loud.

"Everything all right there?" He radioed through. The control room personnel looked at him like he was crazy.

"We're under fire, sir!" Carter yelled. Her voice cracked with static, but it could be heard even from millions of lightyears away that she was in major trouble.

"How long till you get through?"

But before she could answer, she stepped Earthside, along with one of Reynolds' men. Teal'c, two archaeologist geeks, and the rest of SG-3 promptly followed.

"Close the iris!" She shouted, but Walter wasn't fast enough and something that looked like a flock of arrows - and felt probably more than that, Jack's mind interjected - flew out of the gate.

The iris closed, and Jack hurried down to the gateroom. "Get a medical team" he shouted over his shoulder.

"Carter?"

She looked up at him with a pained expression, and clutched her left arm.

"The natives, sir" she managed to get it out between clenched teeth.

"Carter, don't tell me that--"

"They took Daniel" she answered the unfinished question.

"Right."

The nurses arrived, and soon, Jack was left alone in the gateroom, looking disdainfully at the stargate.


End file.
